Centrifuge

Desolate (Paradise Noise)

The doom-metalheads of Centrifuge sound like the kind of guys who spent their formative years smoking the sweat leaf and listening to Black Sabbath 45s at 33 rpm. Singer-bassist Todd Fabian channels Ozzy Osbourne, and guitarist Matthew Servenack's chunky riffs sound like Tony Iommi in slo-mo. Specializing in robotic repetition, the band demonstrates a mastery of doom-stoner-sludge metal, exhibiting originality in a genre full of plagiarists.

Desolate's five tracks work better as chapters in one long song. Each seamlessly segues into the next, displaying the band's conceptual abilities. On "Masked" and "Overcome," Fabian crafts the kind of memorable vocal hooks that are often missing from doom metal -- though not every riff is deserving of the leisurely repetition it receives. But before things drone on too long, Servenack lays down some extraterrestrial atmospherics to keep it interesting.